Investigation of functional connectivity differences based on anxiety tendencies

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychology
• Medical Imaging

Background:

• Anxiety is a normal emotion, but persistent anxiety can be debilitating.
• Understanding the neural basis of mild anxiety in healthy individuals is crucial for early intervention.
• Previous research on anxiety and brain connectivity has largely focused on psychiatric disorders, leaving a gap in knowledge regarding healthy populations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate differences in functional brain connectivity across varying degrees of anxiety in healthy participants.
• To clarify the relationship between anxiety levels and brain network function in a non-clinical sample.

Main Methods:

• Recruited 48 healthy participants without prior psychiatric diagnoses.
• Administered the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) 60 and Manifest Anxiety Scale (MAS) to assess anxiety levels.
• Utilized resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) and seed-to-voxel analysis to compare functional connectivity between normal and anxiety groups.

Main Results:

• Significant differences in functional brain connectivity within the salience network (SN) were observed between normal and anxiety groups for both psychological tests.
• The anxiety group exhibited reduced connectivity between the right supramarginal gyrus and the insular cortex (based on GHQ60).
• The anxiety group also showed reduced connectivity between the right supramarginal and anterior cingulate cortical gyri (based on MAS).

Conclusions:

• Higher anxiety levels in healthy individuals are associated with decreased functional connectivity within the salience network.
• These findings suggest that anxiety impacts brain regions involved in emotional processing and cognitive control.
• The study underscores the importance of examining brain connectivity in healthy individuals to understand the neural underpinnings of anxiety.